Police could be following a trail from Brooklyn to Russia in the hunt for a man suspected of slaying his 56-year-old girlfriend and her 28-year-old daughter in Sheepshead Bay.
Tatyana Prikhodko and her daughter Larisa Prikhodko were found dead with stab wounds Sunday after Larisa's ex-fiancée reported her missing, police and reports said.
Investigators believe the suspect, Tatyana's live-in boyfriend, Nikolai Rakossi, 52, may have fled to his homeland, according to reports.
It’s possible the slayings occurred Saturday, giving the suspect enough time to skip town, the Daily News reported. An FBI source told amNewYork it's too early to tell whether it will get involved in the manhunt.
Police said they found bloody knives in the apartment, which belonged to the mom. The daughter lived on a different floor of the same building at East 13th Street and Avenue W.
Both women were nurses at city hospitals, and Larisa had a 3-year-old son, reports said. Neighbors recalled Larisa as a "beautiful blonde" who cared after her son.
"I can't believe this would happen to someone like her," neighbor Armando Petrillo, 54, told the Post. "She was nice — we didn't know each other well but she said hi from time to time and smiled."
Alex Petrov, manager of Anyway Café two blocks away from the Prikhodkos' apartment, said he was "shocked" at the crime.
"This is a quiet neighborhood, you wouldn't expect it," He said.
The gruesome deaths follow a spate of fatal domestic violence cases, including the death of 23-year-old Sarah Coit allegedly by her boyfriend.
Coit's death caused lawmakers to push for an online domestic abuser registry, which would track domestic violence convictions.
Still, Susan Xenarios, director of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Crime Victims Treatment Center, doesn't think the recent crimes show an upward trend in domestic violence. The real problem, she said, is that extensive media coverage may dissuade people from escaping abusive situations.
"Most women who leave their abusers do so without getting killed," she said. "We sometimes forget that."
(with Sheila Anne Feeney)
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Other recent domestic violence cases:
— Arthur Rubin, 64, of Willowbrook, Staten Island, was charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, Eva Rubin, 63, after allegedly strangling her in their Crafton Avenue home April 12. Investigators said the two had fought about money and that Rubin emailed apologies to family members and slit his wrists and stabbed himself in the chest prior to his capture.
— Raul Barrera, 33, stands accused of murdering Sarah Coit, 23, in her Lower East Side home April 12 just hours before she had arranged to leave him permanently. Barrera reportedly had at least seven domestic violence incidents with two other girlfriends prior to meeting Coit.
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